


Smoke Screen

by spookyawards_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-12
Updated: 2003-09-12
Packaged: 2019-04-27 07:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14420394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyawards_archivist/pseuds/spookyawards_archivist
Summary: A smoke-break: Reyes and the Skin-man ruminate on love, lust, reality and illusion. Oh, and they make out a little.





	Smoke Screen

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Spooky Awards](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Spooky_Awards), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [SpookyAwards' collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/spookyawards/profile).

 

Smoke Screen

## Smoke Screen

### by Starla Dear

Title: Smoke Screen  
Author: Starla Dear Category: S/A/R  
Rating: R  
Keywords: Reyes/Doggett Angst, Reyes/Skinner lovin' Spoilers: The Truth  
Archiving: Please! I would be honored beyond measure. Disclaimer: A bunch of people who aren't me own the characters and everything else about the X-Files. But maybe if fanfic lives on, it will help fill the gaping hole left by the end of the series... I'm only doing this for the betterment of mankind (and also because I feel like it). 

Summary: Set post-The Truth. A smoke-break: Reyes and the Skin-man ruminate on love, lust, reality and illusion. Oh, and they make out a little. 

Background notes: In this universe, Mulder's prediction that those who helped him escape are not safe is true. Skinner and Reyes are on the run together. Yeah, yeah - it's an atypical pairing, but try it - you might like it. 

* * *

The air here is hot, oppressively hot. And wet. The brief afternoon rain didn't do anything to relieve either the humidity or the heat. So, she's sweating as she stands on this island of relatively dry red clay, surrounded by dozens of small rust-colored pools, and surreptitiously enjoying the forbidden tingle of nicotine flooding her brain. 

She shouldn't keep promising to quit. She should probably just wait a few years, and quit when the aliens and Super Soldiers won't give her time to think about her lust for tar and carbon monoxide. Still, there is a good side to her current short-lived attempts at abstinence - it's the renewed intensity of the buzz she gets when she finally yields to temptation. The first drag is always so good: the vertigo, the warm thickness of the fumes making their way into her chest, the momentary respite from the everydayness of life. 

It is just a game she and Walter play - this quitting. He knows it's not permanent, but he pretends to believe her when she says it is. And sometimes, when her will-power falters, he'll even go as far as ordering her to stop in his most authoritative AD voice. It's the same strong bass that sent chills down her thighs when he was her boss and he had stared at her over his big oak desk. He doesn't have that authority over her now, but there is a little thrill in playing the role, and that tone of voice still sends the sparks of electricity through her body. So, when she complies and throws the half-empty cartons away, they both pretend it actually means something. 

She's not too worried about any of that, though, because she figures everyone has at least one vice. She happens to have two. In the scheme of things, that's not too damn bad. He probably doesn't even care whether she smokes or not. And even if he did, he couldn't complain too strenuously - his body is her other vice. If she starts exercising restraint, his tight, muscular form might just be the next thing she gives up. So they both play the game, pretend that she's quitting and don't question any of it too much. 

After all, time is short, duty is nearly all-consuming and what pleasure may be found is never without a cost. 

She raises the cigarette to her lips slowly; savoring the anticipation of the next hit, before finally inhaling it greedily. She holds the smoke in her lungs, willing the drug to enter her blood and soothe her overactive nerves. It's actually quite similar to how she would try to draw the largest possible effect out of the joint before she passed it to her boyfriend that first year of college... She can hear John's New York accented disapproval chasing these thoughts through her head - "Monica, you didn't!" Yes, she knows exactly what he would say and just how he'd say it. She knows him that well. She has a feeling the former AD, on the other hand, may just let loose that gravel-throated chuckle at the confession. 

She wonders where John is now and if he even spares her a thought - if he pictures her standing near an old dilapidated gas station, taking up smoking for maybe the hundredth time in her life and watching through the minimart' s window as Walter cleans his wire-rims on his shirt tail. John was the greatest cost for the little bit of pleasure she decided to seek. She had tried for so long to reach him, but she'd eventually had to let him go. She had been a friend to him, only wanting him to let her in a little bit. But he didn't want her inside. He wanted his grief and his duty and noble righteousness. And he didn't want to share. Not with her, anyway. When he'd asked her for help with finding Mulder and hiding Scully and when he'd wanted her as a partner, she had thought he'd been ready to let her in. But he hadn't. Not really. She was allowed to watch his back, guard the periphery, but he was never going to lower the gate and ask her to enter. 

The air in this squalid southern town is so thick with water that not even the sunlight can pass unhindered. She watches as the heat seems to wrinkle the air and the light refracts off the invisible vapor, changing the shape of immutable objects. The road ripples in the distance. She knows it's an illusion born of heat and humidity, but she imagines the drug can show her a new reality. Maybe the wavy road is real and the straight road is just what she's wanted to see. 

She watches her lover as he pays the attendant and pretends not to notice the thin stream of gray smoke floating out of her hand. Maybe he is the reality and John is what she had wanted to see. For years she had thought that she loved John, imagined that she alone saw the hidden treasure in him. With time and patience and through honest caring, maybe she would help him to claim that treasure, maybe she would help him to love something other than his pain. But it hadn't happened. It wasn't going to happen. And she couldn't wait forever; she didn't have forever to wait. That's when she had started to think that maybe it was time to let go of one who only wanted to hold on to ghosts for one who was willing to fight the monsters, both within and without. 

She flicks the cigarette into one of the nearby puddles as he turns toward her. He gives no impression of noticing, though he probably bought more of the useless patches while he was in there. She'll throw the rest of this pack away before they leave as a gesture of goodwill. There's no reason not to, she's got another in her luggage. Besides, right now she's feeling a little bit generous. It probably has something to do with the new buzz she feels coming on, the one that isn't nicotine-induced at all. 

This is a completely different drug, and it's much more addictive than the first. 

The humidity is finally working in her favor and has dampened his clothes just enough to make them hang heavy on his body. It allows her to watch the play of his muscles as they flex and relax in time with his purposeful stride. She feels another tingle of anticipation, this time working down her chest and focusing low in her belly. The slow slide of sweat rolling from the nape of her neck to the dip in her lower back has gone from irritating to titillating. She imagines it's his; she feels it falling from his forehead as he takes her from behind. 

He must see her desire then, because he doesn't slow his pace as he walks toward her. It forces her to step back across the muddy ground until she is pressed flat against the side of the car. She feels trapped, hunted and fiercely desired. 

He doesn't mention her little transgression. He won't, of course. It's part of their game. And as his tongue cleanses any evidence of her nicotine sin, she is willing to believe that maybe this is the reality and the rest is illusion. 

* * *

She tastes like cigarettes. Not that he's surprised, of course. Years of observing without looking have left him able to watch her without seeming to. And he saw her smoking. Not that she was trying very hard to hide it. She's so funny about those things. Promising to quit and then changing her mind a few hours or days later. She seems to think he wants her to quit. It's almost is if she wants him to disapprove. He doesn't, though. He doesn't really care about it all. In the scheme of things, a little tobacco is the least of their worries. But she's too cute when she knows she's been caught, and so he plays along. 

Underneath the burnt tobacco, he can taste their cinnamon roll breakfast and below that, a hint of something much better. He wants to think it is their flavor, left over from last night. That's the taste he can't get enough of. 

It is so damn hot out here and the humidity is stifling. It's too hot to be this close to another body, but he's drawn to her like a magnet and he can't step away. His hand slides over her hip, relishing the soft texture of too often washed denim and he's delighted when he encounters the slickness of her lower back as the exploring hand slips under the hem of her cotton top. Her skin is wet, the sweat having collected in a pool on her lower back. He knows it was Podunk, Mississippi that put it there, but he pretends that he is its source. That it is his sweat, falling on her like rain as he kisses the flawless skin of her back while his hands run over the soft expanse of shoulders, breasts and stomach. 

He hopes she's not thinking of Doggett right now. He knows she often does. It's only normal. John was her friend, her confidant and her partner for the last year. He's noticed when she draws her thoughts in close to her as they ride together in silence. And in those times, he can all but hear her wondering where her former partner is, if he's safe, if she made the right choice. She misses John. He accepts, even expects, that. He just hopes that she isn't thinking of John right now, that she doesn't see the other man when they are like this. 

He leaves the nicotine and sex cocktail of her mouth and presses his open lips to the salt of her neck, burying his face in the steamy warmth of the flesh that runs from her shoulder to jaw. He loves this spot, the warm lingering scent of her, the delicate satin of seldom-exposed skin, the instinctual thrust of her body into his own as he alternates caressing it with his tongue and teeth. His left hand moves low on her waist, descending to cup the tight curve of her, pulling her toward him, even as his body pushes her into the metal of the car. 

It's always explosive with her - wild and greedy, an expression of both need and freedom. It is visceral and raw and never enough. He'd known long ago that she was fire, that she was addictive - more addictive than any one of her damn cigarettes! He used to call her and her partner to his office, simply for the chance to watch her cross her long, thin legs and listen to her very Mulderesque theories. He had ached to touch her, to let his fingers linger on her firm shoulders, to run his palms over hips. And when she'd looked at him, he had known he'd been caught. She had seen his desire and - God help him - she had returned it in her gaze. And he had been terrified - scared shitless, but he couldn't stop this. He couldn't fight this instinct. He had an intrinsic need to touch her, and so he did. 

He has no idea why she had chosen to come with him, searching out nameless contacts and cryptic clues that were the legacy of the ever-prepared Gunmen. She has never told him why she didn't follow Doggett, didn't go and help him guard Gibson. She didn't tell him, and he didn't ask. He would like to believe it was because of some grand ideal, like destiny or fate. That in some great cosmic scheme, she was somehow meant to be his. That she could belong to him, even a little bit. But he knows better than that. He understands that what they have is more chance than preordained. He can accept that, though. It doesn't have to about love. For now, it is perfect. It is enough. He can almost believe it is real. 

He feels her thigh moving up, her leg curling around his hip. He realizes that they are in what would officially be called a public place, nearly fucking in a parking lot of red mud, and in front of God and whatever living creatures were insane enough to endure the obscene temperature. He also realizes that the place is all but deserted. The only person in miles is the attendant who was so enthralled with the telephone that she could hardly be bothered to take the price of gasoline and nicotine patches from him. And he wants this so badly. Her hips pressing rhythmically into his. Her breath in his ear. Her leg running so slowly along his thigh - he wants this. God, he loves her legs. 

The first time they made love, he had spent an eternity kneeling before her, running his fingers and then his palms from her ankles to her hips and down again over the backs of her thighs. He had touched every inch of each leg and then moved in closer to repeat the process with his mouth, his teeth, and finally, with his tongue. He'd been so, so ready \- long before even reached under the hem of her long T-shirt \- all from the texture, the taste, the sight of those beautiful legs. She'd returned the favor later - worshipping every inch of his torso, shoulders and arms with her gorgeous lips. 

"We should stop." Her words tumble around in his head, even as his body ignores all the warnings, refuses to read the smoke signals. She's right, they should stop. This can't happen here. Not now. His mind agrees, his voice argues. 

"I can't stop." He doesn't want to quit. Maybe he should offer to quit the day she actually gives up smoking. After all, she's got her addiction, and he's got his. Too late, he realizes he's been thinking aloud, because she pushes him away and sloshes through the mud to throw her half-empty pack of cigarettes in the overflowing trash bin, wearing that smart-ass grin the whole time. 

He lowers himself into the driver's seat slowly, wary of his obvious physical limitations at the moment. He's contemplating an explanation when she enters the car with the creak of the passenger side door. 

"Don't worry, Walter. I've got another pack in the trunk. Find a place to stop and we'll both be able to feed our addictions." 

Goddamn! He's begging whatever gods, aliens or higher powers there may be to please let this be real. He hopes the heat hasn't melted his brain, inciting mirages and distorting her words. He wants to believe that this is reality, that it's not all smoke and mirrors. He has to believe that it is, at the least, one illusion that will not be stripped away from him. 

**END**

* * *

Author's Notes: I used to not care about any coupling other than Mulder &Scully (and still, they are my addiction), but after a while, I started to feel for the Skin-man. After all, he does have a delicious body and there is no need for that to go to waste. I was also sick of watching Reyes throw herself at an uninterested man; she was too hot for that crap. (Not that I am anti-Doggett or anything.) So, why not put the two hotties together? For some reason they seem like a good match to me. Very visceral, primal, athleticmakes me wish I was her! 

\---Starla 

Feedback: You know you want to. Let me know how much you hate Reyes without Doggett. Kick my butt for trying to write non-MSR. Congratulate me for refraining from having her lick his bald head... she really wants to, you know!   
  


#### If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to Starla Dear


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